Gallows' Pole
by gildedhippie
Summary: A 21st-century gamer is found beaten and broken on the doorstep of the Medical Pavilion, 12 years before the first game. slowburn. mental and spiritual exploration into Rapture.
1. Chapter 1

There's a dripping sound.

There's a dripping sound she isn't _used_ to.

Which shouldn't be a particular issue, because of the bathroom sink; a neglected nozzle of the bathtub; the sink in the kitchen on a suffocatingly quiet day...

But the sound is different. The after-ring of the drip, droplet, is a more metallic, resounding sound than she's used to. It's a zinging, flat, sharp sound, a ball of water clapping against a metal- old metal sink.

Plap. Plap. Plap.

She opens her eyes.

A white, tiled ceiling stares at her, blindly; gives it's silent good morning. She blinks, and finds her eyes too heavy, and too swollen to open all the way. She squints, or tries to, and blows air through her nose when her flesh stings, crinkles at the corners of her eyes in an _unpleasant_ way. The tiled ceiling doesn't comment on it, nor does it give her any helpful hints.

Save one. Her mind reels.

Hospice. This is a hospice. This is medical, this is surgical, _w_ _hat happened._

 _S_ he cranes her neck, and fails, neck muscles too thin and too loose to move. She grunts, and tries again. Her neck rattles, trembles with exhaustion, _exhaustion, what_ happened _to her._ She's only able to lift it an inch, before fatigue settles in and latches its claws. Her head drops, and sparks of pain shoot ragged lightning from the base of her skull. Her eyes close, and the sweet relief of not-pain has her huffing in dry humor.

Her brow furrows.

Was she run over? Did she trip? Did she fall down the stairs, even as her mother warned her to be careful? The stink of fresh gauze and vaseline and the sweet, cloying smell of anesthesia is both soothing and wretched, and she opens her eyes again. Her _**mother**_. What happened to her mother? Is she here? Is there a waiting room? Is there a doctor?

Her bones ache, her legs ache, her elbows ache. A bone-deep ache so intense it starts to feel good; she snorts again, barely a snort, and lifts her neck. She lifts it all the way, breaking out in a hot, sticky sweat, beading on her upper lip. She runs her tongue over it, and finds her bottom lip split and scabbing.

She's in a hospital room, white and cream furniture with tiled floor, no chipping. The walls are bare, with a pale, blue wallpaper with diamond shapes in tandem. No clock, no windows. White cabinets with brass handles hang on one wall; a white, tin dresser sits close to her bed; and she feels the sheets, the crisp, linen sheets under her hands and under the backs of her legs. The cabinet is so close she can see the curling designs in the molded, metallic handles. They remind her of the clawed feet under old bathtubs, when sink nozzles were square and brass.

She cannot see her body. She can feel her left arm, draped over her stomach, hard and bulky and she realizes it's in a cast. She can barely wiggle her fingers. There's a thin needle of panic ready to pierce through the thin membrane of her dignity.

There's a sound of scuffling of shoes, from somewhere behind her head. It's muffled; from behind a _door_. She lays her head back down, her fingers twitching from the abrupt relief of resting. She's relieved she can feel no pain in her knuckles, and no pain in her hands, _hand_. Her left wrist gives a dull, wet throb under her cast.

The sound becomes louder, more pronounced. Boots on a floor. The door opens, and there's a pause, soft and silent, before a man clucks his tongue. She goes rigid.

" _Oh_ , she's awake." The boots come closer, the door closes: _slides_ closed, gives a grating, scraping sound on its hinges, too soft and barely there. She grits her teeth, and squints her eyes as an orb of light floats in her line of vision, violent and bright, and grounded by the metal stalk of its lamp. The light is _blinding_ , and **_hurts her eyes_** , and she squeezes them vice-tight against it, still able to see the searing-red splotches through her lids. She's reminded of a dentist's chair, but worse.

"Oh, pardon _me_." The orb is removed, and she blinks rapidly, eyes burning and tearing and squinting, stinging from pain; her jaw clenched and aching, her bones aching. Another voice beside the one in her head is a gentle prod to bring her back into reality, back to _this_ , and it's a harsh prod, as rubbing at the same spot of skin over and over and it becomes red and raw and sensitive. She sniffs, and blinks rapidly, and strains her tired, blood-bursted eyes to see the face of the man who hovers over her. The water in her eyes gains in mass, and volume, and drips and rolls down her cheeks, dripping off her chin.

Plip. Plip. Plip.

"No no no, please don't cry." The voice is so gentle, so soothing. She sniffs again, and balls her free hand into a fist. There's another scraping sound, and a high and soft whimper comes from her throat, as she sinks into the hospital bed and the smooth, soft sheets for a sense of safety. The man's face comes closer, becomes lines and creases and shapes, and a man with soft, brownish hair and a strong, square jaw smiles down at her. She swallows heavily, opening her eyes as wide as they could go. High cheekbones, watery, oval eyes. Subdued mustache over his upper lip.

"...w-ho-" She can't speak; her voice cracks, and rattles in her throat. She clears it, gathers a clump of phlegm instead, tries to clear it again. Her face warps into a grimace of disgust and wide-eyed panic. The man clucks, shaking his head in a very slow show of pity. "Now, now, be mindful. You are still very weak." There's a kerchief in his hands as he reaches for her, as he reaches to dab at the drops of wetness at her cheeks. Despite his voice, and despite his touch, she flinches, exhaling sharply through her teeth, and he clucks again when her bones force her away from the gentle touch.

"I won't hurt you," he soothes, in practiced, dulcet tones. He dabs at her cheeks, and she remains still. "I took an oath, as a doctor, to never harm my patients." He huffs, and his smile widens, becomes genuine. He has a dimple on each cheek. "Even as a plastic surgeon. A doctor is a doctor." He blots the tender areas under her eyes, her bottom eyelids, ever so mindful to not poke her, and she stares at him. She blinks when he's done, her eyes dry and burning. She swallows again, heavily and pointed.

"... water?" It's forced, and barely mouthed. It comes out as more of a whisper, but it's a word.

His smile turns into a grin, and he tucks the kerchief in his breast pocket. He's wearing the atypical white jacket of a doctor, buttoned to his neck with shiny, brass buttons. It's old-fashioned, because it wraps around his neck in a protective turtleneck, nearly up to his chin. "Right away." He pats her hand, her free hand, in a comforting gesture, and it _works_ because that wound-tight vice in her gut loosens, just a fraction.

He leaves shortly after that, and she wishes she didn't ask for water, so he could've stayed.

He only left to find a glass, and his boots make the scuffling sound, and the door makes it sliding-closed scraping sound. And there's a sink behind her, near the blinding light on the metal stalk, because she can hear the pipe-rattling creak of a faucet, of an old faucet, and the sound of running water has her eyes burning, and her throat stinging, and her tongue drying like an old husk in her mouth. She smacks her lips, and a sudden creak of a mechanical sound shifts her chair, sharply, and she can't stop the high, breathy shriek when it jerks forward, bent in half. She's sitting up, and her cast rests in her lap. "Oh, I'm sorry! Goodness _sake_ , I'm terrible at this."

She can see her feet, scraped and nicked, and cleaned and bare. She wiggles her toes.

A glass of water is put in her line of vision, and she instinctively reaches for it. It wobbles in her unbroken hand, and nearly splashes over the rim, but she does manage to bring it to her lips. She sips it, and sighs, softly.

The man's face is closer and smiling with genuine apology as he reclaims his chair. He threads his fingers together, and sets them in his lap. His hands look chapped, rubbed raw and left to heal, prickling and ragged. She looks up at his face, instead.

"You have a broken arm." She nods her head. He talks slowly, and mouths over each word, staring at her intently. She alternates between watching his mouth, and looking at his eyes. "You have two muscles torn in your left wrist, so it _will be a while_ before you can use it again. You have had head trauma, and a deep laceration across your scalp. You won't need to worry about scarring, because, it is at the back of your head. Your hair will cover it." He waves his hand, as if to chase away any worries of potential vanity. She has none.

She has a lot of hair. She sips her water.

"Do you remember what happened?" He asks it in a soft voice, eyes gentle and endearing. A lump forms thick and sudden at the back of her throat; she sips her drink to clear it. It helps. She drinks, and swallows a mouthful.

"... no." She doesn't remember what happened. She wasn't run over, she didn't trip, she didn't hit a door or fall down the stairs. She didn't pick a fight, she didn't get stuck in an accident. She shakes her head in the negative, and winces when her head throbs. A pinpoint of ice forms between her brows, and settles in her temples. She huffs through her nose. "I- remember waking up." _Talking._ "I don't remember what happened. What happened?"

His smile thins, becomes a frown, but the comforting, concerned look in his eyes never falters, and she very nearly swoons at the _competence_ of this doctor. He's very good at his bedside manner, or she's very easy, and the corner of her lip quirks up, in a straining mimic of his formerly-cheery expression.

"... we're not sure. We found you, or, one of my nurses found you-" His frown deepens. "In your _condition,_ in the Medical Pavilion. She said she found your body purposely hidden in the plants." He pauses when her face becomes too pale, too white. She sips her water. She breathes through her mouth, slow and practiced.

Stuck in the _plants._

She _did_ get in a fight.

"I don't know what happened," she mutters. It's all she can say, because it's the _truth._ She stares at her water, lips pursed, blinking tired, swollen eyes. She wiggles the fingers stuck in the cast, tries to tap her fingerpads together.

"We believe it was purposely," he continues, in that slow, measured tone one takes when talking to an abused animal. "-Because of how it was done. It's not the first time something like this has happened, though they _are_ rare. I would call the authorities, Miss, and tell them everything I knew about this instance, if I was in your place." He holds out his ragged, bitten hands, palms open, in a meaningful gesture. He smiles gently. "We've prepared a bed for you, here, for as long as you'd like, until you recover. And I mean _recover_." His eyebrows rise. "You're welcome to keep a radio, but I'm afraid television is still a new commodity here." He huffs a laugh.

She stares at him.

 _Television_ as a new commodity?

Radio?

She opens her mouth; she closes her mouth. He smiles at her. Her face prickles in a flush. "M-may I have a newspaper?" New commodity. His smile widens, and his dimples deepen.

"Of course. And more water, yes. You must be hungry, too." He stands, brushing the seat of his rear in an absent gesture. He smiles down at her, once more, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a charming expression. She finds herself smiling back, even if it pulls painfully at the tender skin of her face. "My nurses will take you to the new room. This was just a waiting room."

… waiting room, her _**mother**_ –

"Again, you're welcome to books, a radio, newspaper, anything to keep you safe and calm until your wounds have healed enough to be without pain. We have sedatives to help the process along if it becomes too unbearable. If you have need of _me_ , just ask any of the nurses for Dr. Steinman. Business has been slow lately, but I have a feeling it'll pick up." He winks.

She makes no gesture, save a mechanical smile, as he turns and leaves, and she hears the sliding-closed sound of the door as it shuts.

She sips her water.

Plap.

Plap.

Plap.


	2. Chapter 2

Her new room has a clock. And a window.

She didn't need to walk to be moved; her bed is rolled across the clacking tiles with the small, squeaking wheels it's attached to, and she's grateful. Her nurse is sweet, and sweet-voiced, with bleach-blonde hair and pouty, full lips. Her make-up is impeccable and delicate, with thin eyeliner and fluttery lashes and rouged lips, and she tries hard not to _stare_. Her newspaper lies folded and new in her lap.

She stares at the window.

She is not prepared to see the window.

The 'window' is a floor-to-ceiling-length glass wall, wreathed in metal beams and round, bulky nuts and screws. Beyond the wall, and beyond the glass, lies the colorful assortments of the fleshy details of five or six coral reefs, settled at the base of a cliff and half-sprawled on the outside of the glass. A clownfish peeks its head from the squirming insides of a blue-and-yellow anemone, and a school of silvery fish sluices its way through the throngs of another school of fish, darting and weaving past each other like it's a day-to-day activity. A starfish has latched itself on the surface of the glass and bares it's inner tendrils and hollow belly to the occupants of the room. Barnacles grow and stand silent on the outside of the metal beams. Something long and pinstriped swims rapidly past her line of sight, a ribbon of black and white in the water, and disappears behind the metal wall.

A sea snake.

She blinks. She blinks hard, and sits up from her bed.

"- Dr. Steinman will be in from 6:00 AM to 1:00 AM, from Monday to Saturday. There's a little buzzer on your end table, just there? You can tap it once, and one of us nurses will be there quick as a flash to answer. Did Dr. Steinman tell you about the painkillers?"

"... hm?" A great shadow of a large sea creature hovers over the fluctuating reef, and the remaining schools have fled, in fear of it. She cannot see the owner of this shadow from where she sits. She blinks again, and looks up, at her nurse. 'Aveline,' says the gilded, cursive print of her nametag.

"Yes, he told me about it."

"Good." Aveline nods, once. "You feel any pain? Ring the buzzer, ask us about it. Better yet, ask me, those other girls are too stingy when it comes to painkillers. They never give out enough." Her delicate nose bunches. "Dr. Steinman said you haven't eaten anything yet. Any preferences?"

She's taken back. She looks out the window. The fish have come back; the shadow is gone.

Maybe it's a fancy hospital.

"Oatmeal."

The pretty nurse bunches her nose again. "That's it?" She nods her head. That's it. Aveline snorts, in an unladylike fashion. "It's your food, sweetie. I'll bring it. Do you have everything you need?"

She hesitates, grasping the newspaper with her free hand. "... a radio?"

"I'll bring that too. Won't take me a moment." And she leaves, the click-clack of her heels fading as the door slides shut behind her.

She sighs, heavily, the great weight behind it slumping her shoulders and leaving her breathless and weary, and a little teary. The window at her side leaves an eerie, blue glow, shining faux sunbeams on the tiled floor of her room, mimicking moonbeams, broken when a fish or a slithering creature slinks past the glass opening. Her head reels, and her temples throb. It isn't until she hears the upset sound of crumpled paper does she realize her hand has balled into a tight fist.

She releases the newspaper, and flattens it on her lap, raising her knees a little to better see the headline.

She goes straight to the date.

 **April 6, 1947**

She freezes.

 **April 6, 1947**

She leans away from the newspaper. She glances at the window. The starfish hasn't moved.

She leans forward, eyes narrowed.

 **1947**

 **47**

 **Fort Frolic Opened For Business!**

She folds the newspaper. She pointedly ignores the print, the glaring bold that screams advertisements for the Fleet Hall, for tickets to the new and improved Sander Cohen, straight from Broadway! Don't miss out! She swallows bile, and breathes through her nose, and sets her paper on the little table, next to the buzzer.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, and swears under her breath when a migraine flares. She has a bandage, a grouping of bandages, wrapped around her head; to keep the nice slash at the back of her scalp from bleeding everywhere, she's assuming. In a way, it's a comforting thing. A grounding thing. She runs the pads of her fingers on the edge of the gritty gauze, smelling the hospital smells and waiting for her oatmeal, pointedly ignoring the pulse of pain. Figures and shadows dance on her floor, outlined in blue light.

"I'm in fucking Rapture."

She picks it up and reads it again.

* * *

It's a little earlier than she originally wondered.

"I thought I'd be with Jack," she mumbles, spoken past a full spoon. Her bowl of warmed oatmeal sits on a silver tray, sat on another plate with a capped, porcelain jar on either side. White sugar and cinnamon. The bowl and the jars are white, with little, green, painted hummingbirds.

Aveline is a nice person. Her newspaper sits folded and tucked beside her radio.

" _If_ I'd ever get here. If. Fist full'o loightnin'. How the _fuck_ did I get here." She eats, spooning oatmeal into her maw with a ravenous pull. It's a bit difficult with her split and healing lip, but she works over it. Her brows turn furrowed and furrowed, deepening in creases to rival the Mariana Trench. She could probably see it from here. Take a field trip, maybe even spot it from Arcadia. She nearly swallows her spoon.

God, Divinity, _Something_ save her, she's really here. _She's really_ _ **here.**_

"What the hell am I going to do?" This is too early for her. 19 _4_ _ **7**_. Her cast lies in her lap, useless and heavy. She frowns at it. She wiggles her fingers.

She's in Rapture, she's in the **forties** , and she's been beaten black and blue and stupid for no apparent reason. She's in the care of _Steinman,_ before his ADAM escapades. She's an introverted, unrelenting, proud woman from the 21st century, in the forties.

She sighs heavily. No more jeans. No more jeanshorts. No more ripped shirts. No more ripped anything, unless Splicer Chic is all the rage; pun unintended. She frowns tightly.

Are Splicers an issue, right now? Has the ADAM slug bit the warfman?

She shakes her head, nostrils flaring. No, it's too early. From the timeline on the wiki, from the last time she's _checked_ , this is the year Fontaine shows up in Rapture, firstly. Miss Tenenbaum is still early; the Little Sisters' Program hasn't even started yet. Maybe the slug _did_ bite the warfman. Maybe Tenenbaum is unlocking its secrets, right now.

Jack isn't even a thought.

She blows air through her mouth, loud and long and noisy. She finishes her oatmeal, scraping her spoon against the bottom of the bowl for the last bites, tucking it in the bowl of sugar a few times for good measure.

Healing is top priority.

Getting a job is second.

Get a _house_ is tied with second.

"An apartment," she mumbles, reaching over with her free hand for the radio. It's a cute little thing, brown and made of wood and shaped like a fancy, curved archway. A dial bearing the lighthouse logo shows no obvious marks; no numbers or signs of radio stations. Her lips purse, and she toys with it, her brows rising when the light turns on in the little window, flickering from the jabbering of different frequencies.

How can one send and spend radio frequencies underwater?

She spins the little wheel, half-hanging off her bed, cast settled in her lap. She twists and twists until she finds a clear signal, some male voice in a lilting timbre, a song. She huffs, and gruffs. "This is different."

The sound becomes clearer, and clearer, until: "Somewhere, beyond the sea..."

She guffaws, face alight in surprise. Her head flares in pain. Terribly cliché! She leaves the knob alone, and settles back in the bed. Her toes wiggle, and she smiles, big and wide. Her face hurts, her arm hurts, her fucking head hurts.

Man, she hurts.

She's in Rapture, before the storm. Before the Civil War. Booze and opportunity at every corner. Steinman is nice, in the beginning, and the nurse is sweet and cute. She has a great view, inside and outside. An angel fish puffs its lips as it floats along the edge of the coral, gently waving its fins in such a delicate way. She smiles at it, swollen eyes creasing.

Maybe this could be a good thing.

Maybe she'll try a plasmid or two.

Maybe she'll start an affair with Fontaine, who knows?

She's actually _glad_ she started this early.


	3. Chapter 3

Talking is a purposed difference.

In speech patterns; lilt of tongue twists and a dampened working of _slang_. No ain't's, no ya'll's, no yuns's, not for her. This is the forties, this is a weird area for women and freedom of speech; but the women of Rapture are loud, raucous, out-spoken, bold-and-brash creatures who've never given two shits about anything beyond their ideals and spat at the boots of Andrew Ryan since the beginning. Her nurse included.

On the second day of seeing her face, the second day of hearing her voice and given concise, quick instructions to keep her eyes from hurting and her elbows from bumping, and the nurse asks if she could smoke in the middle of her practiced, robotic speech. She laughed, said yes, it doesn't bother her. The nurse even offered _her_ a cigarette; she had declined, immediately, and rattled on about how it was bad for her health, how it would stain her teeth and she loves her teeth. Truth be told, they taste like she licked Satan's dusty kneecap. Always did. Aveline complained they taste _nothing_ like the ones Upstairs, that they taste like sand and "fish shit", so she wonders if negating her offer was such a bad thing.

She wonders if alcohol would mess with her anesthesia.

She's made it an effort to speak "properly", if she speaks at all. To enunciate each word as if pronouncing a sonnet in vocal toneness. It does wonders for her verbal vanity. She wonders, lyrically, as she reads the paper and headlines and even the abstract obituaries, as she reads the single, three entries in the smallish section. Rapture is still so _new_.

The swelling in her eyes has gone down, tremendously. She can open them wider, a little more each day. She hasn't been in front of a mirror; the bathroom connected to the spacious room is bereft of a mirror for, whatever she assumes is a self-safety practice. Maybe something about those seeking beauty never seeing their face as it's mangled after surgery. Brilliancy on Steinman's part, if so.

Delicate vanity in the forties. She wonders what they'll think of her impending unibrow and unshaven armpits.

Her face is not as tender, not as bruised, and she can touch it without wincing, can palm it and grasp it, cup her chin and smooth her brow with her fingertips. She's touched it earlier, a few days ago, to poke and prod at her high cheekbones and pointed chin to make _sure_ it was **her** face, and not some cosmic joke that gave her another face and body for a karmic lesson. A cliché worthy of fanfiction, pah.

But, everything seemed to be in order, thankfully. Her nose was unbroken, surprisingly, despite the face wounds. She wishes for a mirror.

She's walked around, not too far to be out of sight of the room; the trauma of her proverbial and literal impact has come and gone, a fleeting, fading reminder in her skin. In her hospital clothes, with a tightly-tied, too-loose shirt and tightly-tied, too-loose pants, bare feet, no bra, no underwear, she walked the floor like a wandering lunatic ready for the pound. Aveline had given her a sling for her cast when she found her, instead of the screeching reprimand she initially expected.

Aveline had walked with her, smoking, and talking and talking to take up the silence. She simply listened.

Rapture is as new as a freshly-plucked peach. The roar up at Fort Frolic is a dull, maddening throb, and artists and singers and songwriters flock to the gates like flies to fresh honey. Sander Cohen sits at the top, his crossed legs draped over the armrest of his throne, staring out at the throng of songful, soulful people with two inquisitive eyes. There's a rumor that he's looking for an apprentice, Aveline gossips, flicking the roll of her lighter: big and bulky, engraved with her cursive 'A'. She lights another cigarette, offering one from her crumbled pack in an afterthought.

She politely declines.

The fate of Cohen's disciples was never a kindly one. She only recently earned the 'Irony' achievement, back home; she used to _sympathize_ with him, with his plight and artistic restraint. That was her first, and second playthrough; she makes a face.

"Do you think someone would be hiring? In Fort Frolic?"

The delicate, blond lines of Aveline's eyebrows rise, and a plume of smoke blows from the side of her rouged mouth. "I don't know. Maybe? It just opened for the public, they might! You'd have to elbow your way past everyone else though, just to get a seat in the ladies' room." She flicks ash with the side of a perfectly-manicured nail, letting it drop on the floor. Her heels click-clack as she walks, next to her bare, silent feet. No shoes.

She wonders where her clothes are. Was she found with clothes?

"You lookin' for a job?"

She hums an affirmative. "I'm looking for housing." Instantly she winces, and sucks on her healing lip. She wonders if it was _wise_ to mention her homelessness, especially to someone like Aveline.

Bless her golden heart.

"Oh. I didn't know you were homeless." Aveline flicks away the butt of her cigarette in the nearest ashtray, tall and long and made of metal. If she had any worry of the _authenticity_ of this dream, or fever hallucination, it's evaporating quicker with everything she's seen. And heard, from the whine of the little drills and the scraping sounds from the neighboring rooms, beside and across her own. This morning, she saw a shark from her window, and she saw it swallow a fish in a messy, cloudy bite. There's a little furrow of concern between Aveline's brows. "That sounds so dangerous."

She shrugs her shoulders, loosely. "It doesn't feel like it." Pauper's Drop is the only place she knows that takes the unemployed. If it's there. And since the first game revolved around Rapture _after_ the Civil War, she has no idea what it looks like. Maybe it's livable. But she _knows_ the connecting restrooms are going to be a problem, eye-washing station or no.

She can't even use the public bathroom.

"I haven't been here long. I didn't plan ahead for an apartment, or a job." She grins, and it only slightly pulls the skin of her face. "I was taken by the view, truthfully."

Her nurse's pretty lips skew in a look of quiet distraught. Her heels clack against the floor, and her own bare feet move from linoleum, to hardwood, smoothed and polished. _This_ part looks familiar, and she chalks it up to one of those late-night scouring sessions where she opened every door and hacked every machine for new items and hidden recordings for juicy details. There are no signs, and there are no other stark reminders that the double-doors belong to anything but an empty, square space. Either they've moved to a newly-furnished area of the Pavilion, or this is about as clean-cut and squeaky clean as Rapture could get. Even a prototype. No whirring of a turret, no mechanize chime of the intercom in a Pavlov reminder to keep elbows tucked in at the Bathysphere. It's peaceful; it's _quiet._ She loses her footing, tripping over her pantleg and knocking her shoulder against a wall, remaining there a moment. She hisses through her teeth when the pain sets in, snorting through her nose.

It's such a _weird_ thing to get used to.

"Oh _,_ _dear_ , honey!" Small-boned hands with soft palms grip her shoulders, and upright her, with some difficulty. "You need to watch where you're going! A woman in your _delicate_ position could get in all kinds of trouble without proper supervision! Oh, you shouldn't even be out walking. Come come." She pats her shoulder, smiling. The nurse nudges her forward, getting her to walk back the way they came, hands permanently affixed to her shoulders. In her heels, her nurse is a head taller than her. "Back to bed. I still need your name, and your d.o.b., for your medical records. We can hash out all the details of your employment and housing once you're nestled in." We?

It's a weird thing to be cared for as you've been injured; injured beyond any hint of _why_ , but the comment of her 'medical records' brings another weird thing up to plate:

She needs a name. She feels no real inclination to give out her _real_ name, for reasons unknown even by _her_ standards. Would someone know her here? Would she actually give more than two shits if she's called a nickname her mother would use back home? A pang of of her mother nearly makes her grimace, and she pointedly watches her feet.

She'd feel trapped, honestly, sharpened claws sunk in her veins, flapping broken wings if she ever tried to escape the literal nightmare the city would collapse, and reshape itself into, after the setting of Frank's death and the dawning of Atlas.

Atlas. _Who is Atlas?_

She allows herself to be lead, chin tucked neatly to her chest, silent and stone-faced. Fontaine is a son of a ragged bitch, on the nitty-gritty, no lie given no lie brought. To play the hand given, and to keep her soul unmarred and fresh-faced, she needs to keep _away_ from canonical events, and important people. But the urge is too great.

She wants to talk to Kyle Fitzpatrick. She wants to talk to Tenenbaum. She wants to see Sander Cohen perform before his mental break. Fort Frolic is the first step. She needs to make up a list, another list, and actually, _physically_ write it.

Dr. Steinman is in her room. He checks her pulse when she's sat on the bed, shines a light in her eyes for pupil dilation, prods tenderly at the fleshy areas underneath her eyes and around her mouth, asking appropriate question. Can she breathe, do her ribs pain her, how does she feel today?

She can't see her face. She wonders if it looks bruised: yellow splotches on her cheek, or faded black and angry red up and along the lines of her cheekbones, fading into her hairline. Dr. Steinman says she has a slash on the back of her scalp, will she scar? Is it big? She keeps her head still as he grasps her chin with both hands, narrowing his eyes at the healing rip on her bottom lip.

She tells them her name is Tia Dalma, and she was born July 1st, 1925. The idea of her birth in the _**twenties**_ makes her light-headed, but she thought long and hard and did some math, and decided against the "I'm really from the future and this is all a passing fancy" story. There isn't a mental institution in Rapture, that she's seen, but maybe Mr. Ryan would throw in something equally special, just for her.

The ocean theme seems like a good idea.

He scribbles down something in his notepad with a gilden pen as she answers each question. He mutters about sedatives, plans to give her some throughout the week, and to make a date about her cast. It's been almost two weeks since her arrival. Nine days, exactly. The absence of the sun and morning birds puts the puking spin on any amount of biological clock she had on the surface. She wonders about plasmids, as she wiggles her encased fingers, touching the pad of her pointer finger to the pad of her thumb. Her wrist still throbs, and pains her some when she reaches for the radio, or to adjust the opened newspaper in her lap. It feels immensely better than it did in the beginning. She thinks about about _tonics_.

Gene tonics. Physical tonics. Her mother told her she came from the genetics of a relatively addictive family, whether by booze or weed or physical activities, strenuous activities. Adrenaline junkies or alcoholics. Or potheads. Like chewing on gum instead of your nails. She wonders if it's true. She's eager to try it, plasmids, ADAM, even if her gut-sense snarls at her for it. Not _wise_.

Dr. Steinman mistakes the stomach growl for hunger. He sends Aveline to bring more oatmeal, at her request, with a side of orange slices. She didn't get any looks of disbelief when she asked for the fruit, so Arcadia must be opened and growing steadily.

Dr. Steinman is an attentive doctor. Subtly attractive, like the movie stars in the black-and-white films. She's read in the wiki that he would see visions of Aphrodite, patron goddess of outer and inner beauty, well before his descend into Rapture. It's an interesting thought, something to mull over, and it spins a more intricate backstory to this character. To this _person_. He's nice to look at, she didn't expect that part. The red-stained model in the game didn't exactly leave much to the imagination.

He made a comment about her face, last week, as he prodded the skin. "You have such a lovely bone structure." She took it as a compliment, because the alternative would make her ill. He looks at her feet, frowning tightly at the smattering of dust from her recent walk. No cuts, nothing burns from infection; her toenails need trimmed, and she asks for clippers. He promises he'll get them, checking the heel and ankle of her left foot, moving it gently. He asks if she feels any pain, and she says no.

"Good. Well, Miss Dalma, a few more days and you should be good as new, save for your arm." He releases her ankle with a soft little pat, smiling pleasantly. She smiles back. "I'm going to send you home with a prescription... er, a plan." No pharmacies. "I'm going to keep you for at least three more days, to see how well your wrist and broken bone have healed in that time. Does that sound alright to you?" He still talks to her like a wounded animal in a corner. She nods. "Good." He pats her ankle again, and gets up to leave. There's another starfish stuck on her window. It's big, and blue.

Three more days. Stuck with a cast and no job, no house, no bed. No food.

She sighs heavily.

"You don't look too happy," Aveline comments, holding her tray. Warm, plain oatmeal. She eats it slowly, savoring every bite, loading each spoonful with a mass of sugar. She saves the orange for last.

"Dr. Steinman says I get to leave soon. Three more days."

"And that's a bad thing?" One of her delicate brows rise again. The other joins it. "Oh. _Right_ , sorry, homeless. I forgot, I'm sorry." She shrugs, loosely. She's silently, quietly panicking; she eats slowly; she stares at the window.

Out of the frying pan, into the fryer. She very really hopes Pauper's Drop has been invented, communal bathrooms be damned. Aveline stares at her while she eats, big, brown eyes opened wide and wondering, her mouth down-turned into a frowning pout. She doesn't mind it. She scrapes her spoon on the bottom of the bowl. She takes an orange slice, and chews it slowly, eyes slipping closed as the juices explode and seep, and she huffs through her nose, sinking into her bed.

"You could live with _me_."


End file.
